"Half of our family was already killed from 1948 until now," said Abdallah Alswalha, a Palestinian American living in South Florida who was born in Gaza and who is grieving over the loss of what he calls his people.
"They don't have electricity, they don't have water, they don't have anything, they are already dead inside their area; they're blocked, they can do nothing," said Alswalha, 43, who was eager to grant us an interview to underscore that "not everyone who lives in Gaza is a terrorist."
"These 2.1 million people living in Gaza, they're not Hamas (Islamist militant movement), they 're human beings, families, children," said Wilfredo Ruiz, a Muslim Chaplain and South Florida attorney. He immediately reacted to the news release by United Nations' Humanitarian Office that says at least 200,000 people have been displaced in Gaza.
"Unlike the 200,000, you may hear from the conflict in Ukraine, who go to another city, they go perhaps to another country.
These 200,000 displaced (in Gaza), it's what we call 'internally displaced,' they live in a place that is just two times the size of Washington DC, and all this war going on and this displacement going on is going on in that street," said Ruiz.
The weekend's attack stunned Israel with a death toll unseen since 1973.
"It is terrible, do you think we are standing with killing innocents, no," responded Palestinian American Abdallah Alswalha. "Let's flip it, how many missiles from October 7th until now have hit Gaza, how many innocent people did they kill?
Meanwhile, Wilfredo Ruiz says this war is far from over.
